Philips DVDR1648 DVD-Writer Review

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Review:
Philips DVDR1648
Reviewer: Jan70
Provided by: Philips Europe
(NL)
Firmware: P2.2
Manufactured: May
2005

Philips was kind
enough to send us the Philips DVDR1648. This drive supports 16x DVD±R, 8x/6x DVD+RW/DVD-RW and 8x/4x DVD+R DL/DVD-R DL writing technology, allowing Double/Dual Layer
discs of 8.5Gb to be written.

Philips has a long
history for developing optical drives and has in the past joined up with BenQ
for manufacturing and developing optical drives. This strategy alliance seems to
gain both BenQ and Philips. BenQ has the production facilities, while Philips
designs chipset/electronic components as well as being on of the main DVD+R/RW
developers.

Company
information:

We are sure that
most of you know Philips already, but let us take a look at some of the company
information found at www.philips.com. 

Royal
Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is one of the
world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 29
billion in 2003. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting,
electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and
one-chip TV products. Its 165,300 employees in more than 60 countries are active
in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances,
semiconductors, and medical systems.

Global Leader

Royal Philips
Electronics is tenth on Fortune's list of global top electronics corporations.
We are active in about 60 businesses, varying from consumer electronics to
domestic appliances and from security systems to semiconductors.

We are a world leader in digital technologies for television and
displays, wireless communications, speech recognition, video compression,
storage and optical products as well as the underlying semiconductor technology
that makes these breakthroughs possible.

We have world class solutions
in lighting, medical systems (particularly scanning and other diagnostic
systems) and personal and domestic appliances where our investments in design
and new materials are critical to success.

Translated into figures, we
produce over 2.4 billion incandescent lamps every year, and some 30 million
picture tubes.

Around 2.5 million heart procedures (scans and
interventional procedures) on X-ray equipment are carried out each year using
our technology.

One in seven television sets worldwide contains a
Philips picture tube, and 60 percent of all telephones contain Philips products.


Thirty percent of offices around the world are lit by Philips Lighting,
which also lights 65 percent of the world's top airports, 55 percent of major
soccer stadium, and 30 per cent of hospitals.

The strength of
Philips' global operations is reflected in its (value-based) leadership position
in many of the markets in which it is active:

Company
strategy:

'BEST"


- BUSINESS EXCELLENCE THROUGH SPEED AND
TEAMWORK '“

The BEST program is
Philips' chosen path to achieve business excellence. It describes a set of
methods and tools by which we continuously improve our efforts. Previous
successful initiatives are incorporated in the program to make sure we learn as
much as possible from our successes in the past.

Business
Excellence

We are all committed
to improving processes in-line with the company's strategic targets. To this
end, Philips has adopted BEST to reach this goal. It is our ambition to be one
of the best companies in the world: the best to trade with, work for, and invest
in.

Our
Measures:

• 
  
  Customers are
  fully satisfied by the quality of Philips' products and
  services


• 
  
  Employees develop
  and use their full potential


• 
  
  Shareholders get a
  premium return on their investment


• 
  
  Suppliers choose
  to work with us as this generates superior value for both


• 
  
  The larger
  community appreciates our contribution to the quality of life
  

Speed and
Teamwork:

Speed and Teamwork lie at the heart of the BEST initiative.
Each and every individual within Philips knows that only by fully cooperating
and working together we are able to perfect our business processes. That's why
we focus on:

• Working smarter and reducing the
  cycle-time of processes
  
• Working in teams and learning
  from the best practices of others

The tools and
approaches in the BEST initiative all are based on these two focal areas and all
fit in the improvement cycle:

"Plan -
Do - Check - Learn"

If you are
interested in reading more company information, please visit www.philips.com.

 

Drive specifications:

Now let us
take a look at the specifications of the Philips DVDR1648, found at Philips' UK
website:

 

What's inside the box?

On this page
we will take a look at the drive and its technology.

Below you will
see the contents:

• The
  internal drive itself
  
• Nero 6 OEM
  Suite
  
• Guide and
  Help documentation (How to…..?)

Now it's time
to take a look at the drive itself:

As we can see, there are some
changes on the bezel this time compared to previous models. On the bezel we
found; an eject button, an emergency eject hole and a LED (green - for read and
write - we prefer a different LED colour though for writing). The logos include
the CD-RW Ultra+ logo, the Philips company logo, the model-series logo, a DVD Alliance DVD+R
DL logo, and a DVD Forum DVD-R/RW logo.

On the underside of the drive we
found two stickers, and we can read it was manufactured in Malaysia, dated May
2005.

On top of the
drive and on the right side, we can see the ventilation system/feature called
Air Flow Cooling System (AFCS) and Anti-Dust Cooling System (ADCS).

On the back of
the drive starting from the left, we can see a digital audio connector; analogue
audio connector; pins and jumper to set the drive to cable select, slave or
master; IDE connector and finally the power connector.

We installed
the drive without any problems and here is a screenshot from Nero
InfoTool:

 

From the
screenshot of Nero InfoTool above, we miss Mt.Rainier and a larger buffer size.
Our drive came shipped with firmware P2.2 (which support the SolidBurn
feature).

And another
shot from Nero Burning ROM:

 

But let us continue
this review and see how it really performs.

On the next page we
will take a look at the test machine, the software, the drive
features…………

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Test machine:

For this
review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

• Motherboard: Asus A8V Deluxe
  
  
• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3500+
  (Venice) 1000 MHz Hyper Transport
  
• RAM: 1 GB Corsair Kit PC3200 DDR
  
  
• GFX: ATI Radeon 9600 XT
  
• Sound: Onboard Realtek
  AC'97
  
• Hard
  disk: Seagate Barracuda ST3250823A
  250 GB

System
set-up:

The Philips DVDR1648 was connected as Secondary Master and
identified itself as PHILIPS DVDR1648P1. DMA (Direct Memory Access) and autorun was enabled for all devices.

Software:

Windows XP
Professional is installed on the computer along with Service Pack 2 for Windows
XP. We will be using the following software in this review:

• Nero Burning ROM version
  6.6.0.17
  
• Nero CD/DVD Speed
  V4.06
  
• Nero Info Tool
  v3.07
  
• Slysoft CloneCD
  v5.2.5.1
  
• Exact Audio Copy
  v0.95 beta 3
  
• K-Probe v2.5.1
  

 

Features and techniques:

SolidBurn:

What is
Solidburn?

Philips
introduces SolidBurn, a new self-learning feature that will ensure optimal
writing conditions for any recordable DVD+R or DVD-R media.

This advanced
writer feature executes a series of tests on an 'unknown' DVD media to determine
the optimal writing strategy. Without SolidBurn, new DVD media and media that
are not in the media list of the drive, are written using a less optimal
standard write strategy. This could result in lower recording speeds than
specified or lower quality recordings jeopardizing disc playability or
lifetime.

How does it
work?

Before the
disc is burned, the drive writes two very short tracks, one in the LeadIn and
one in the LeadOut area of the disc. Then the drive measures the jitter on both
areas and decides if this jitter value is OK or not. If not, the drive will
choose another writing strategy and redo the test until the Jitter is
acceptable.

After this,
the drive writes your data on the disc, with the best possible writing strategy,
which was found by SolidBurn.

Why
SolidBurn?

Every disc
sold has unique parameters. Mostly, these parameters are almost identical, but
sometimes, there are better and less good or even bad discs.

Normal drives
will always use the same writing strategy, no matter if the disc inserted is a
good or a less good one. SolidBurn will adapt its writing strategy for each
disc.

Normal drives
who encounter a disc they do not know, will use a default writing strategy,
which is mostly not the best one. To guarantee better performance on unknown
discs, regular firmware upgrades are required. SolidBurn makes no difference
between known and unknown discs and will always choose the best writing strategy
for each disc.

Some
graphs

SolidBurn
shows the lowest jitter measured (lower is better):

Using
SolidBurn also gives the highest possible writing speeds, resulting in the
lowest average recording times:

EDITORS
NOTE:  When using the SolidBurn feature the operation LED on the bezel will
flash rapidly to indicate SolidBurn writing mode. (For none SolidBurn mode or
other writing the LED will flash slowly)

SolidBurn (and
Overspeed burning) feature can be manually controlled in Nero Burning Rom and
Nero CD-DVD Speed:

BookType
(bitsetting):

The Philips
DVDR1640P supports bit-setting, and will as default write DVD+R, DVD+RW and
DVD+R DL media with DVD-ROM book type.

This feature
can be controlled or changed with the Bitsetting option in Nero CD-DVD:

Here is how
you could check if your discs are really written with DVD-ROM book
type:

Start Nero
CD-DVD Speed and click the Disc info button and you should get something like
this:

DVD+R DL with book type
DVD-ROM

DVD+RW with book type
DVD-ROM

DVD+R with book type
DVD-ROM

Another quick
test is to start Nero CD-Speed and look at the disc information:

This should say
DVD-ROM.

Now it's time
to take a closer look at the write technology used by the Philips
DVDR1648:

CD-Recordable:

The Philips
DVDR1648 uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at
its maximum speed of 48X. This gives an average speed of 35.03x and a total
writing time of 2 minutes and 58 seconds.

For comparison
we have made the following table: 

As we can see
from the table, the Philips DVDR1648 is among the fastest drives when it comes
to writing CD-R's.

CD-Rewritable:

The Philips
DVDR1648 uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular
Velocity) writing technology to write at 32X for CD-RW discs, the average
speed is 30.01x and the total time 3 minutes and 17 seconds.

For a better
overview we present the following comparison table:

As we can see
from the table, the Philips DVDR1648 is among the fastest drives writing
CD-RWs.

16X DVD+R/-R
Writing speed:

The Philips
DVDR1648 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write
DVD+R at the maximum supported speed of 16x. This gives an average write speed
of 11.47x and a writing time of 5 minutes 58 seconds.

The Philips
DVDR1648 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write
DVD-R at its maximum speed of 16x. This gives an average write speed of 11.33x
and a writing time of 6 minutes and 20 second.

Below are some
write graphs from some other drives for comparison:

The NEC 3540A uses CAV
(Constant Angular Velocity) to write DVD+R at 16x. This gives an average writing speed of 11.81x and a writing time of 5 minutes and 58
seconds.

The Philips
DVDR16LS uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity) to write
DVD+R at 16x. The average speed is 11.33x and total writing time is 6 minutes
and 8 seconds. The average speed is lower and the writing time is higher than it
could have been due to the Walking OPC generation 2 using some time to
constantly adjust the writing quality, we could see this as constant dips in the
speed curve.

The LG
GSA-5160D uses Z-CLV,
(Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+R at 16x. The average speed is 11.60x
and total writing time is 6 minutes and 12 seconds. Below, we made a comparison
table:

*1 - Actual
writing speed was max 14x due to USB-Bridge limitations.
*2 '“ Actual writing
speed was max 13x due to USB-Bridge limitations.

8X DVD+R DL
writing speed:

The Philips
DVDR1648 supports 8x writing speed on DVD+R DL media.

The Philips
DVDR1648 uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular
Velocity) to write DVD+R DL at 8x. The average speed is 7.43x and total
writing time is 15:15 minutes.

4X DVD-R DL
writing speed:

The Philips
DVDR1648 supports 4x writing speed on DVD-R DL media.

The Philips
DVDR1648 uses CLV, (Constant Linear Velocity) to write
DVD-R DL at 4x. The average speed is 3.80x and total writing time is 29:50
minutes.

8X DVD+RW
writing speed:

The Philips
DVDR1648 uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity)
to write DVD+RW at 8x. The average speed is 7.69x and total writing time is 7:54
minutes.

6X DVD-RW
writing speed:

The Philips
DVDR1648 uses CLV, (Constant Linear Velocity) to write
DVD-RW at 6x. The average speed is 5.91x and total writing time is 10:31
minutes.

Included
software:

Now it's time
to look at the included software and to comment if needed. Notice that we may
not use the included software in our performance testing part of the
review.

Nero OEM
suite (SolidBurn edition):

Now that we
have finished examining the drive and its writing strategies, it's time to head
on to next page, which is reading performance
test…

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Reading performance:

For these
tests we will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD's, including
audio discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction, this drive
supports:

• DVD-ROM :
  16x
  
• CD-ROM :
  48x 

Pressed
discs:

For this test
we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing Creative Blaster Audigy install CD that
is close to 74 minutes long. Below you will see the produced result:

The Philips
DVDR1648 reached 47.12x. Let's compare the result in the table below:

The Philips
DVDR1648 performed above average reading pressed CD-ROM.

CD-Recordable
Discs:

For this test
we made a copy of the original Creative Blaster Audigy install CD. The disc we
used was a Verbatim 48X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemicals
Corporation. 

Again the
Philips DVDR1648 performed above average on CD-R read test.

* Some drives
including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually
moving the pickup.

 CD-Rewritable discs:

Again, we made
a copy of the original Creative Blaster Audigy install CD; this time we used a
Verbatim Ultra Speed (32X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals
Corporation.

As we can see
above, the Philips DVDR1648 is locked at 40x, reading CD-RW; now let us compare
it to other drives below.

Again the
Philips DVDR1648 performed above average on CD-RW read test.

* Some drives
including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually
moving the pickup.

Audio '“
Digital Audio Extraction:

We used Nero
CD/DVD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is slightly
larger than the disc used for the other tests, to be exact it's about 78 minutes
long (77:43:45).

The Philips
DVDR1648 reached over 49x while reading this CD-DA disc. Let us compare the
result with other drives:

The Philips
DVDR1648 performed among the fastest drives on the Audio-CD.

* Some drives
including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually
moving the pickup.

Below is the
results produced by EAC:

 Burst mode

 Secure mode

The drive
performed excellent in burst mode and rather slow in secure mode.

Advanced
audio '“ DAE quality test:

Before we move
on to testing DVD read speeds, we will take a last audio test, and this time we
used the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed. For this test we used
a CD-R DA media from MMORE (Thanks to MMORE (NL) for sending us this
media).

The extracting
quality is excellent and it should support everything, except reading the
Leadout.

 

DVD reading performance:

Again, we will use
Nero CD-Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of
DVD discs. The drive should read pressed single layer DVD-discs at
16X.

DVD '“
DVD-Video:

For our DVD
reading performance tests we are going to start with a single and Double Layered
DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required to watch DVD movies, it's
useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds if you're going to extract
(rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

DVD-Video Single Layer

 
DVD-Video Double Layer

As we can see
the drive reached 16x on DVD-Video Single Layer and 12x on DVD-Video Double
layer.

The Philips
DVDR1648 performed excellent on the DVD-Video SL/DL tests.

 

DVD '“ DVD+R/RW:

For this test
we used a Verbatim 16X DVD+R and a Verbatim 8X DVD+RW with about 4.4Gb of data.
Below are the results:

DVD+R

 
DVD+RW

The Philips
DVDR1648 performed above average on DVD+R and DVD+RW. Now let us see how it will
perform on DVD-R/RW.

 

DVD '“ DVD-R/RW:

For this test
we used a Verbatim 16X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW disc filled with
about 4.4Gb of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-R

 
DVD-RW

There are
hardly any differences in the speed, compared to reading the DVD+R/RW
discs.

Once again the
Philips DVDR1648 performance was above average while reading
DVD-R/RW.

Overall
thoughts:

The Philips
DVDR1648 is a good reader, it's not the fastest reader in the world, but during
our read tests it proved reliable.

But now
it's time to head on to a more interesting part: Writing CD-R and CD-RW
discs…

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The
specifications of the Philips DVDR1648 state that the drive is able to write
CD-R discs at 48x and CD-RW at 32x. Let us find out how the drive really
performs in speed and quality.

Writing Data CD-R discs:

For our data
writing tests, we simply set up a new compilation of 700Mb using Nero Burning
ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once),
and the disc is set up as a non-multisession disc with 'finalize disc" enabled.
The screenshot below shows how long it takes to write a disc at the highest
speed. (40x):

The drive used
2 minutes and 50 seconds to write the disc at 48x. Let us see how this compares
to other drives:

• LG
  GSA-4167B used 3 minutes and 7 seconds at 48x
  
• Pioneer
  DVR-110D used 3 minutes and 34 seconds at 40x
  
• NU DHW-164
  used 3 minutes and 12 seconds at 40x
  
• Philips
  DVDR16LS used 3 minutes and 26 seconds at 40x
  
• Samsung
  TS-E552U used 2 minutes and 52 seconds at 40x
  
• LG
  GSA-4163B used 3 minutes and 15 seconds at 40x
  
• Philips
  DVDR1640P used 3 minutes and 17 seconds at 40x
  
• NU DDW-082
  used 3 minutes and 2 seconds at 40x
  
• Samsung
  TS-H552B used exactly 3 minutes at
  40x         
  
• Plextor
  PX-708A used 2 minutes and 58 seconds at 40x

 

Write Quality:

We will test
CD-R discs from different CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed,
we used the 'create data CD" function in Nero CD-Speed. The discs were written
at the maximum speed that the drive supports. For the quality test, we used
KProbe 2 which is a tool developed by a Lite-On employee. It runs under Windows
and works with drives made by Lite-On. Also note that different drives and
different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the
discs. We used a Lite-On SOHR-5238S drive with firmware 4S09 and scanned the
discs at 48X speed.

A written CD-R
disc will always have some C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the
drive's error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2
errors could also be corrected by most drive's error correction capabilities;
they are not wanted on a good quality disc. A good disc should not contain any
C2 errors, and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the
best discs, or at least below 10.0 averages for good quality discs. After C2
errors, there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

Below are the
obtained results:

Brand:	BenQ CD-R Thanks to Daxon for sending us this media
Manufacturer:	Daxon Inc.
Code:	97m22s67f
Disc Type:	CD-R
Recording Layer:	Dye Type 7: Short Strategy (Phthalocyanine)
Capacity:	79:59.74 (703MB)
Certified Speed:	52x
Write Speed:	48x
Write Time:	3m:1s
C1 Average/Sec:	0.43
C2 Average/Sec:	0.0

BenQ media with
average C1 errors of 0.15 - it goes into the group 'best quality discs"
category.

Brand:	EMGETON Qauarelle '“ Thanks to Bell Technology (CZ) for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Fornet International Pte. Ltd.
Code:	97m26s07f
Disc Type:	CD-R
Recording Layer:	Dye Type 7: Short Strategy (Phthalocyanine)
Capacity:	79:59.71 (703 MB)
Certified Speed:	56x
Write Speed:	48x
Write Time:	3m:31s
C1 Average/Sec:	0.49
C2 Average/Sec:	0.0

Media made by Fornet
International, and with the C1 average of 0.49 it goes into the 'best quality discs"
category.

 

Brand:	RICOH '“ Thanks to RICOH Europe (D) for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Moser Baer India Limited
Code:	97m17s06f
Disc Type:	CD-R
Recording Layer:	Dye Type 6: Short Strategy (Phthalocyanine)
Capacity:	79:59.74 (703MB)
Certified Speed:	1x-52x
Write Speed:	48x
Write Time:	3m
C1 Average/Sec:	3.55
C2 Average/Sec:	0.0

RICOH media '“
manufactured by Moser Baer India Limited and with its average of 3.55 it goes in
the 'good
quality" category.

Brand:	Traxdata '“ Thanks to Conrexx (NL) for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Ritek
Code:	97m15s17f
Disc Type:	CD-R
Recording Layer:	Dye Type 7: Short Strategy (Phthalocyanine)
Capacity:	79:59.70 (703MB)
Certified Speed:	52x
Write Speed:	48x
Write Time:	3m:04s
C1 Average/Sec:	8.17
C2 Average/Sec:	0.0

This media
goes into the category 'good quality discs" for its C1 average with 8.17.

 

Brand:	Unbranded Printable. Thanks to SVP UK for sending us this media
Manufacturer:	Taiyo Yuden
Code:	97m24s01f
Disc Type:	CD-R
Recording Layer:	Dye Type 1: Long Strategy (Cyanine, AZO)
Capacity:	79:59.72 (703MB)
Certified Speed:	48x
Write Speed:	48x
Write Time:	2m:58s
C1 Average/Sec:	0.14
C2 Average/Sec:	0.0

Media made by
Taiyo Yuden have always had a good reputation and with the average C1 errors of
0.14 it goes into the group 'best quality discs"
category.

 

Brand:	Verbatim '“ Thanks to Verbatim (D) for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation
Code:	97m34s23f
Disc Type:	CD-R
Recording Layer:	Dye Type 3: Long Strategy (Cyanine, AZO)
Capacity:	79:59.73 (703MB)
Certified Speed:	52x
Write Speed:	48x (Z-CLV)
Write Time:	3m:04s
C1 Average/Sec:	0.29
C2 Average/Sec:	0.0

Verbatim '“ a
well-known brand showed us a C1 average of 0.29 - it goes in the category 'Best
Discs".

 

Writing Quality with Re-Writable discs:

Due to requests from
our readers, we will add a few write quality tests with re-writable media.
Settings and testing procedures is the same as used earlier in this review, so
you may want to go back and read them if you are unsure. All discs used for
these tests have been written to before, but none have been written to more than
5 times.

CD-ReWritable
media:

Brand:	N/A '“ Thanks to Daxon for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Daxon Inc.
Code:	97m22s60f
Disc Type:	UltraSpeed CD-RW 16-24x
Recording Layer:	Phase Change
Capacity:	74:41.50
Certified Speed:	N/A
Write Speed:	24x
Write Time:	3m:58s
C1 Average/Sec:	0.25
C2 Average/Sec:	0.0

24x CD-RW media made
by Daxon, the result of this disk is excellent with the C1 average of
0.25.

 

Brand:	Verbatim '“ Thanks to Verbatim (D) for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation
Code:	97m34s25f
Disc Type:	Ultra Speed CD-RW 32x
Recording Layer:	Phase Change
Capacity:	79:59.74 (703MB)
Certified Speed:	32x
Write Speed:	32x
Write Time:	3m:17s
C1 Average/Sec:	11.96
C2 Average/Sec:	0.0

The result is
good.

Summary:

The CD-R writing quality is
excellent, and the CD-RW quality is good.

So let us
head on to next page and read about DVD-Writing
performance…

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The
specifications of this drive tell us that it should write DVD±R at 16x and
DVD+RW/-RW at 8x/6x. In this part, we will measure the write time for various
types of DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW discs. We will also focus on write quality and
media compatibility.

All
DVD±R media burned in this review was done by using the SolidBurn feature.

DVD-Writing performance:

In this test
we will measure the time for writing to DVD±R discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to
burn an ISO compilation containing 4483Mb of data. We used the Disc-At-Once
write method.

DVD+R

DVD-R

Look below for
the results.

The
results are respectable, but let us see how the writing quality is.

 

Write quality:

You should first
notice that this is not a scientific and professional way to test the discs. But
according to our testing done in recent months, we would conclude that there is
a clear link between the quality reported when scanning the disc and the
playability of the disc in different devices. Also notice that different drives
report different amounts of errors. K-Probe was designed to work with
Lite-On
DVD-Writers, so we recommend
using a DVD-Writer from Lite-On. In this test we
use a Lite-On SOHW-1653S
DVD-Writer, as already said; remember that scans done with a Lite-On
DVD-ROM or Lite-On combo
drive can't be compared with the results obtained with a Lite-On
DVD-Writer. Also remember that
different PI/PO ECC sum settings along
with different reading speeds in K-Probe will affect the result, we use these
settings;  PI (Parity Inner) set to summarize 8
ECC blocks,
PIF
(Parity Inner Failures) set
to summarize 1 ECC block,
reading speed: 4X CLV
(Constant Linear Velocity). Setting the PI sum to 8 and the
PIF sum to 1 will give
a result that we may compare to the standards for DVD+R/RW and
DVD-R/RW.

But what is a good
scan? That is a discussion that we don't think will end soon, as different
drives report different amount of errors, some players are more picky about
media than others, and so on. But as a comparison we present you with a scan
from two pressed DVD discs:

This scan shows the results from a pressed DVD-Video disc
(GoldenEye).

 

This scan shows the
result from a pressed DVD-Video disk (The Green Mile). Notice the error jump
when shifting to the second layer (the error level actually drops from the end
of the first layer to the beginning of the second layer).

If you read below,
you will see that both the pressed DVD-discs are well within the
standards.

Download the
ECMA 267 Standard for
DVD-ROM, the ECMA 337 Standard for
DVD+R/RW and the
ECMA 338 Standard for
DVD-R/RW at http://www.ecma-international.org if you
want to look at the standards for yourself. Here is some data from the
ECMA standards (same for
DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW):

Random
errors:

A row of an
ECC Block that has at least 1 byte in error
constitutes a PI error. In any 8
consecutive ECC
Blocks the total number of PI errors before correction shall not exceed
280.

Here we see that a
PI error is defined as a row in an ECC block having 1 byte
or more containing errors and that the sum of PI errors in 8 ECC blocks after each
other should not exceed 280 PI errors.

But what is a row
and what is an ECC block? Again we
refer to the ECMA standards. We do
not copy and paste everything, but if you're interested, look in the
ECMA standards. A row is
182 bytes long where the last 10 bytes contain PI (Parity Inner)
information. An ECC block is 208 rows
long where the last 16 rows contain the PO (Parity Outer)
information. This gives us a maximum possible PI error amount of 208 errors per
block and for 8 blocks after each other this sum is of course 8 times higher,
giving a maximum possible amount of 1664 PI-8 errors. In practical use, a disc
with 1664 PI-8 errors is unreadable.

According to our
tests the specified max PI-8 sum of 280 for good discs seems to be a good
guideline, as some readers have problems reading discs when the PI-8 errors is
over 300 and most players starts to have problems when the PI-8 error level
reaches 600 or more.

But what are the
PIF errors that K-Probe
reports? They are Parity Inner Failures, meaning errors left after PI
correction. Only the ECMA 337 standard
describes the Parity Inner Failures. So how is a Parity Inner Failure defined?
Here is what the ECMA 337
states:

'If a row
of an ECC Block as defined in 13.3 contains more than
5 erroneous bytes, the row is said to be 'PI-uncorrectable"."

In theory, an
ECC block may in the worst case have 208 PIF since every ECC block is 208
rows long. But the ECMA 337 standard goes further and
specifies the max amount of accepted PI Failures (uncorrectable errors) allowed on a good disc:

'In any
ECC Block
the number of PI-uncorrectable rows
should not exceed 4."  

This means that when
the PIF sum is set to 1,
the maximum error value should not exceed 4. The theoretical maximum value for
PIF is 208
errors.

But what makes a
disc unreadable? A POF (Parity
Outer Failure) error will make the disc unreadable, but K-Probe
does not display the POF's.

Notice that there
are other aspects such as disc reflectivity, jitter, tracking errors and so on
that also will affect the readability of a DVD disc '“ but for this we do not
have measuring equipment available.

Also, another note
is that we have scanned the discs at 4X CLV speed,
by lowering the speed to 2X(DVD-R/RW)/2.4X(DVD+R/RW) or 1X
the amount of reported errors may drop on some discs. We scanned at 4X
CLV due to lower speeds
taking too much time.

To see if there is a
connection between the reported amount of errors and readability of the discs we
also include the reading curve from a NEC ND-4551A DVD-Writer. The reason why we
have changed the reader is that some companies disliked that we used a modified
firmware to obtain 16x reading speed. So to please them, we are now using a
drive that reads DVD+R/-R media
at 16x as default. A small speed reduction near the end
is still accepted on good discs, but serious reading problems or reading
failures is a bad sign.

 

Easier
explanation on how to read the test results:

Maybe this got too
technical, and you are wondering what to look for in KProbe
reports?

Use this as a
guideline for good discs:

• PI (Parity
  Inner): No larger areas
  on the disc should exceed 280 PI-8 errors, do not worry too much about high
  single spikes that exceed 280.
  
• PIF (Parity Inner
  Failures): No larger areas
  on the disc should exceed 4 PIF-1 errors, do not worry too much about high
  single spikes that exceed 4.

And as always; lower
is better

And look at the
reading curve; if it looks clean with no dips it should be good, a small
slowdown near the end is accepted.

 

DVD+R media compatibility and write quality:

In these tests
we will be using a Lite-On SHW-1635S drive with firmware YS0V along with KProbe
to measure the disc quality. We will also be using the NEC ND-4551A with
firmware 1-07 along with CD-Speed for our read-back tests.

Brand:	BenQ '“ Thanks to Daxon for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Daxon Inc.
Code:	DAXON AZ3
Disc Type:	DVD+R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	16x
Write Speed:	16x
Write Time:	6m:01s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	1.58
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.01

Very good
result!

Brand:	FUJIFILM
Manufacturer:	Prodisc Technology Inc.
Code:	PRODISC R05
Disc Type:	DVD+R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	16x
Write Speed:	16x
Write Time:	6m
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	0.66
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.01

Fujifilm media
with Prodisc media code, the result is very good.

Brand:	Plextor '“ Thanks to Plextor for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Taiyo Yuden Company Limited
Code:	YUDEN 000 T03
Disc Type:	DVD+R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	16x
Write Speed:	16x
Write Time:	6m:02s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	0.80
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.00

Plextor media
with Taiyo Yuden media code, the result is excellent.

Brand:	Ricoh '“ Thanks to Ricoh Europe for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Ricoh Company Limited
Code:	RICOH JNP R03
Disc Type:	DVD+R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	1x-16x
Write Speed:	12x
Write Time:	5m:59s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	0.30
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.00

Another
excellent result.

Brand:	RiDisc Xtreme '“ Thanks to E-net for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	RiTEK Corporation
Code:	RITEK P16
Disc Type:	DVD+R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	16x
Write Speed:	16x
Write Time:	5m:58s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	1.99
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.00

RiDisc Xtreme
with Ritek media code, the result is excellent.

 

DVD+ReWritable media:

Brand:	Ricoh '“ Thanks to Ricoh Europe for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	RICOH Company Limited
Code:	RICOH JPNW21
Disc Type:	DVD+RW
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	8x
Write Speed:	8x
Write Time:	7m:56s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	2.29
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.01

The result is
excellent for this DVD+RW media.

The result is
good.

To sum it
up: So
far the Philips DVDR1648 writes DVD+R and DVD+RW media with very good quality.
All the test discs had a perfect read-back curve. Let's find out if the drive
can do as well with DVD-R/RW media.

On the next
page you will find the DVD-R/RW writing
results...

---

DVD-R media compatibility and write quality:

In these tests
we will be using a Lite-On SOHW-1635S drive with firmware YS0V along with KProbe
to measure the disc quality. We will also be using the NEC ND-4551A with
firmware 1-07 along with CD-Speed for our read-back tests.

Brand:	BenQ '“ Thanks to Daxon for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Daxon Inc.
Code:	DAXON 016S
Disc Type:	DVD-R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	16x
Write Speed:	16x
Write Time:	6m:21s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	12.19
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.06

The result is
good.

Brand:	Datasafe '“ Thanks to E-net for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation
Code:	MCC 03RG20
Disc Type:	DVD-R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	16x
Write Speed:	16x
Write Time:	6m:23s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	1.03
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.00

Datasafe
media, with Mitsubishi media code and the results are excellent.

Brand:	FujiFilm
Manufacturer:	Prodisc Technology Inc.
Code:	Prodisc F02
Disc Type:	DVD-R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	16x
Write Speed:	16x
Write Time:	6m:23s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	6.84
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.04

The result is
good.

Brand:	Ricoh '“ Thanks to Ricoh Europe for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	CMC Magnetics
Code:	CMC MAG AM3
Disc Type:	DVD-R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	16x
Write Speed:	16x
Write Time:	6m:25s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	4.03
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.01

The result is
good.

Brand:	Taiyo Yuden unbranded '“ Thanks to SVP (UK) for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Taiyo Yuden
Code:	TYG03
Disc Type:	DVD-R
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	16x
Write Speed:	12x
Write Time:	7m:16s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	3.78
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.00

This 16x
certified media, was burned at 12x, properly because of the SolidBurn feature,
as the media will report a writing speed of 16x - however the result is
excellent.

 

DVD-ReWritable media:

Brand:	Traxdata - Thanks to Conrexx Europe for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	RITEK
Code:	RITEK W06
Disc Type:	DVD-RW
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	6x
Write Speed:	6x
Write Time:	10m:31s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	53.89
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.03

The result is
good.

Brand:	Verbatim - Thanks to Verbatim (UK) for sending us this media.
Manufacturer:	Mitsubishi Kagaku Media
Code:	MKM 01RW 6X01
Disc Type:	DVD-RW
Capacity:	4483MB
Certified Speed:	6x
Write Speed:	6x
Write Time:	10m:40s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	12.79
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.01

The result is
very good.

To sum it
up:
Overall, the write quality is very good on DVD-R and DVD-RW media.

Head on to
next page and read about DVD+R DL compatibility and write
quality...

---

DVD+R/-R Double
Layer writing speed and compatibility:

The Philips
DVDR1648 supports the DVD+R DL/-R DL standard for writing Double Layer/Dual
Layer discs with a size around 8.5 GB at a writing speed of 8x/4x. Let us first
take a look at the media's we will use:

Let's find the
manufacturer and media information too, for this we will use
CD-Speed:

This media is
manufactured by Mitsubishi Kagaku Media. Thanks to Verbatim (D) for sending us
this media.

The media is
made by Ricoh Co. Ltd. (Made in Taiwan).  Thanks to Ricoh Europe (Germany)
for sending us this media.

Testing
procedure:
We created an ISO Image from
a pre-authored DVD-Video compliant file set, with a total on-disc size of 8103
MB. We then wrote this image file using Nero Burning ROM 6. Below are the
results:

Ricoh Media

Nero reported
a successful burn with the Ricoh media in 28 minutes 26 seconds. According to
the total writing time, there must be a slowdown at 4x since the writing time is
too high for 8x.

Verbatim media

Nero once
again completed the burn successfully with the Verbatim media in 15 minutes and
43 seconds.

Let us take a
look at the K-Probe results:

Brand:	Ricoh '“ Thanks to Ricoh Europe (D) for providing the sample.
Manufacturer:	Ricoh Co. Ltd.
Code:	RICOH JPN D01
Disc Type:	DVD+R DL
Capacity:	8103MB
Certified Speed:	8x
Write Speed:	8x (4x)
Write Time:	28m:26s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	31.41
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.03

According to
KProbe the PI errors is higher in the near of the layer change then the rest of
the disc.

Brand:	Verbatim '“ Thanks to Verbatim (D) for providing the sample.
Manufacturer:	Mitsubishi Kagaku Media
Code:	MKM 003
Disc Type:	DVD+R DL
Capacity:	8103MB
Certified Speed:	8x
Write Speed:	8x
Write Time:	15m:43s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	9.93
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.01

Excellent
result!

Let us compare
the Philips DVDR1648 results with some other DL capable drives.

*1 Verbatim DVD+R DL
*2
Traxdata DVD+R DL
*3 Ricoh DVD+R DL
*4 DataWrite DVD+R DL

DVD-R
DL:

As mentioned
in the beginning of this page, the Philips DVDR1648 supports the DVD-R DL
standard at 4x. Let us first take a look at the media we will use:

Let's find the
manufacturer and media information too, for this we will use
CD-Speed:

This media is
manufactured by Mitsubishi Kagaku Media. Thanks to Verbatim for sending us this
media.

Again, we used
Nero Burning Rom 6 to write the DVD Image:

The Philips
DVDR1648 used 30 minutes and 14 seconds to write the Verbatim DVD-R DL 4x media
at 4x.

Brand:	Verbatim '“ Thanks to Verbatim for providing the sample.
Manufacturer:	Mitsubishi Kagaku Media
Code:	MKM 01RD30
Disc Type:	DVD-R DL
Capacity:	8103MB
Certified Speed:	4x
Write Speed:	4x
Write Time:	30m:14s
PI-8 errors Average/Sec:	10.71
PI-1 failures (PIF) Avg/Sec:	0.02

Overall this
media was burned with good quality.

 

Standalone DVD-Player compatibility:

We only have 3
standalone DVD-Players and 1 standalone DVD+R/W recorder available to test the
DVD+R DL media (BookType: DVD-ROM) and the DVD-R DL media (BookType: DVD-R)
with:

• Aiwa DVD
  Player XD-DV370
  
• Medion
  DVD/DivX Player MD7457
  
• Medion
  DVD/DivX/NeroDigital Player MD80796  
  
• Red Star
  DVD-Player 230G
  
• Mustek
  R100A DVD+R/W Recorder
  

Compatibility
results: 

All DVD
Standalone devices played both the Philips DVDR1648 burned DVD+R DL media. But
only one DVD Standalone devices would play the DVD-R DL media.

We would like to mention,
that the compatibility issue with standalone DVD Players/Recorders and the DVD-R
DL media format is caused by incompatibilities with the standalone devices used
in this review, and not the Philips DVDR1648 or media format used.

Summary: Good writing quality on
the Verbatim DVD+R DL/-R DL media. The DVD standalone compatibility results, for
the DVD+R DL media is very good.

Before we
round off this review, let us run the drive through some advanced tests at next
page…

---

To round off
this review, we will run some advanced tests on the Philips DVDR1648. These
tests are: 'Sheep Test", protected audio discs and some special disc tests.

The 'Sheep Test":

 For this test, we will use
the Sheep tests made by Alexander Noé. Why is it
called sheep test? That's because the logo of the first 1 to 1 copy program
called CloneCD is a sheep. When
looking at supported writers, you will notice that the feature list has sheep to
indicate if a feature is supported or not. In this case we are interested
in the writer's ability to backup/write weak sectors.
Also called: 'Correct EFM encoding of regular
bit-patterns".

• No sheep: Can't backup any
  Safedisc 2
  versions without the help of software tricks
  
  
• 1 Sheep:
  Can backup Safedisc 2 up to version 2.4x without software tricks
  
  
• 2 Sheep:
  Can backup Safedisc 2, including version
  2.5x
  
• 3 Sheep:
  Can write all possible weak sectors, few if any writers could do
  this.

One of our
forum moderators Womble, has written a guide concerning the
'Sheep Test" that can be found here.

In the
screenshot below taken from CloneCD, we see the Philips DVDR1648 supports
everything, expect writing - CD+G RAW-DAO.

The Philips
DVDR1648 supports DAO-RAW recording mode, which basically means, it can write
uncorrected data and sub-channel data.

As we can see
from the table the Philips DVDR1648 is a 'Two Sheep Burner", but it however
failed to write the Safedisc V2.90 and Sheep3 tests.

 

Copy protected Audio:

For our
protected audio test, we used the Exact Audio Copy program. We inserted the
protected audio discs and if the drive was able to recognize the disc we tried
to extract the music tracks to the hard drive. First let us look at the discs we
had available for this test: 

Celine Dion: A
New Day Has Come; protected with key2audio version 3.

 

Herbert
Gé¶nemeyer: Mensch - This disc is protected with Cactus Datashield 200.0.4
.3(build 12b)

And Michelle:
Leben!; protected with Cactus Datashield 200.5.1.91 '“ 5.10.090.

Results:

 

Overburning:

To test the
overburning capabilities of the Philips DVDR1648, we used the over-burning test
in Nero CD/DVD-Speed.

For this test
we used an Infiniti Professional Compax 99min/900mb CD-R. (Thanks to Medea
International (UK) for providing the disc).

According to
Nero CD/DVD speed the drive can overburn to more than 99 minutes.

To test if the
Philips DVDR1648 is capable to read 100 Min CD-Rs, we used an approximately 100
minutes CD-R:

As we can see
for the picture above the Philips DVDR1648 had no problems reading a 100 minutes
CD-R.

This
concludes our Philips DVDR1648 review, let us head on to the last page to read
our conclusion…

Positive:

• Supports CD-R/RW writing at 48x/32x
• Supports DVD+RW/DVD-RW writing at 8x/6x
• Can write DVD±R/+R DL certified media at higher speed
• Overall good writing quality
• Supports Bitsetting for DVD+R/+RW/+R DL (sets auto. BookType to DVD-ROM)
• 'Two sheep" writer
• Supports DAO-RAW writing
• Extracts CD-DA at high speed
• Can rip copy protected Audio-CDs
• Reads CD-ROM/CD-R/CD-DA at 48x
• Reads DVD-ROM/DVD-Video SL/DL at 16/16x/12x
• Reads DVD±RW/±R DL at 12x
• Can overburn CD-Rs up to 99 min
• Can read 99 min CD-Rs
• Excellent documentation/Owner's Manual
• Drive LED will indicate when SolidBurn feature is being used (by flashing rapidly)
• SolidBurn and Overspeed feature can be controlled in Nero and Nero CD-DVD Speed manually
• Cooling solution
• Good Software package
• Nice Bezel design
• Affordable price

 

Negative:

• Does not support Mt. Rainier
• Reads CD-RW only at 40x
• Reads DVD±R only at 12x
• Green LED for both reading and writing

 

Conclusion:

Let us summarize the most important positive and negative points below:

The main positive points: The two new features '“ SolidBurn and Overspeed introduced with this drive seems to be an excellent combination. If a DVD±R is good enough for 16x, it will write them at 16x. If not it will adjust and lower the writing speed, until a new suitable speed have been found and learned.

One benefit of having to enable or disable the Overspeed feature through Nero Burning ROM is that users who do not need or want to Overspeed do not need to worry about it, as it is disabled by default. However power users who like to experiment will have no problems to enable or disable the SolidBurn and Overspeed features through Nero Burning ROM.

A new cooling solution was introduced with this drive, which seems to make the drive run cooler than previous Philips drives. The cooling solution simply reduce the risk of over-heating during high-speed reading and writing.

Bitsetting on DVD+R/+RW/+R DL is also a welcome inclusion and ensures good compatibility with set top DVD players.

The printed 'How to…?" documentation was also of a high standard and should provide enough information for the beginner as well for the more experienced user.

The main negative points: There is hardly anything negative about this drive, but we would like to mention that other drives offer faster read speed on CD-RW and DVD±R media.

To sum it all up, this is what we would say: 'Overall a good drive, that offers some really nice features, making it suitable for both beginners and advanced users".

Based on our tests and experiences during this review '“ we give the Philips DVDR1648 our 'Safe Buy award".

By using our price grabber feature cdfreaks.pricegrabber we did not find any offers, but at getprice the drive is listed at 46.11 €. (November 2005).

 

You may comment on this review below or in this forum thread.

 

Thanks to:

Bell Technology spol s.r.o. '“ Czech Republic for providing the media used in this review.

 

Conrexx Technology B.V./RITEK Europe '“ The Netherlands for providing the media used in this review.

 

 Daxon Technology Inc '“ Taiwan for providing the BenQ media used in this article.

 

E-Net Distribution '“ United Kingdom for providing the media used in this review.

Medea International '“ United Kingdom for providing the media used in this review.

MMORE International B.V. - The Netherlands for providing the media used in this review.

 

 

Plextor SA/NV '“ Belgium for providing the media used is this article.

Ricoh Europe '“ For providing the media used in this review.

 

SVP Communication '“ The United Kingdom for providing the media used in this review.

 

Verbatim - Germany and United Kingdom for providing the media used in this review.